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As a result of writing the post about feministe’s latest anti-sex-work fuckup, I’ve ended up with a long list of stuff-everyone-should-read-about related to sex-work activism. And then my computer crashed, and most of it was lost, except what I had already included in the stub that ended up becoming this post. So here is the list of items that survived the crash, and which everyone should read. And at the bottom are the twitter feeds of sex worker’s rights advocates (so you can get this kind of info yourself, if you’re on twitter):

Regardless of the objective of the operations, “rescue raids of sex establishments have exacerbated violence against sex workers and compromised their safety,” say the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS.

The problem with the raid and rescue industry is that it uses some of the most oppressive arms of the state to target sex workers – the police […]. Whether sex workers have been trafficked or not, their understanding of what the police do is very different than that of other people because they are so often targeted as sex workers, migrants, transgender people, or for other reasons.

In Merseyside, England, violence against sex workers is treated by the police as a hate crime. This means that when a sex worker is the victim of an assault, robbery, or rape, she or he can report the incident without fear of being charged with prostitution, because the police have agreed to place a higher priority on convicting the criminals who harm sex workers over criminalizing sex workers.

As a result of this shift in policing strategies in Liverpool, the rate of conviction for crimes against sex workers rose dramatically to 83%, whereas the national average of such convictions in the UK is only 6.5%. Within only 18 months of the implementation of the hate crime policy in 2006, sex workers increased their reporting of violent crimes by 400%. Besides reducing individual acts of violence against sex workers, this shift in priorities also reduces systemic violence, by sending a message to society at large that the unique oppression faced by sex workers is not acceptable.

The current moment of globalization is witnessing an extraordinary movement of people, legitimate and illegitimate, across national and international borders. These movements are exposing the porosity of borders, the transnational reality of subaltern existence, and the contingent foundations of international law. And this global movement of people has created a panic across borders- a panic which is manifesting itself in the strengthening of border controls, tightening of immigration laws and casting of the “Other” as a threat to the security of the (First World) nation-state.

Women’s cross-border movements continue to be addressed primarily through anti-trafficking discourse at the international, regional, and domestic level. […] women, especially from the postcolonial world, are cast as either victims, incapable of decisionmaking or consenting, sexual deviants, disrupting the moral and social fabric of the sexually sanitized West and or dangerous “Others,” threatening the security of the nation state

The disadvantaged migrant woman becomes the ideal worker from the standpoint of capital and integral to sustaining the current structure of the economy. This situation of illegality and disadvantage also renders migrant women vulnerable to exploitative and forced labour like conditions of work.

Solving violence committed by husbands and partners is very difficult. Sometimes the [Cambodian Prostitute Union] calls the police to intervene when members have experienced domestic violence. Officers then come to the house and say to the husband: ‘If you do this again, we will arrest you.’ But the next day they will say that domestic violence is a family matter that should be resolved in the family, and that they do not want to encourage divorce.

The CPU also assists the women to make a formal complaint to the local authorities and will accompany them to ensure that they are not discriminated against. Safe shelter with relevant women’s legal and human rights organisations will also be sought for women who experience extreme violence, at the request of the women. Whilst the CPU cannot provide direct legal assistance, it refers sex workers to supportive local legal or human rights organisations that can provide advice and a lawyer if a sex worker wishes to take the case to court.

Not that a lot of North Dakotans read my blog, but this stuff is bound to be googled a lot in the near future (signups for the insurance exchange and medicaid expansion start on October 1st), and I found it very hard to find anything, so once I finally stumbled on useful information, I figured it would be good to put it all into one place.

First of all, the basics: open enrollment starts October 1st, coverage kicks in January 1st, and open enrollment ends on March 31st. Everyone who lives in ND and is either a U.S. citizen or a resident alien is eligible for the exchange.

There’s the main site for health care stuff, https://www.healthcare.gov/. Clicking on the “See your options” button will get you the standard insurance-questionnaire and lead you to possible options of what you may or may not be eligible for, and also a short FAQ with some other issues relating to changes as a consequence of the ACA (Also known as Obamacare).

If you’re looking at Medicaid, ignore the part where it says you should go to ND’s medicaid website for more info. They’ve not updated anything to reflect the coming changes yet. This will probably be the most useful bit of advice:

Starting October 1, 2013, fill out an application for the Health Insurance Marketplace. When you finish this application, we’ll tell you which programs you and your family qualify for. If it looks like anyone is eligible for Medicaid, we’ll let the Medicaid agency know so your coverage can start in 2014.
[…]
North Dakota will expand its Medicaid program in 2014 to cover households with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level. That works out to about $15,800 a year for 1 person or $32,500 for a family of 4.

If you’re looking at reduced premiums for coverage from the exchange, there’s a calculator that can give estimates, but nothing will be “official” until October 1st and the calculator is for national averages not for ND specifically, so the quotes may be somewhat inaccurate. The calculator is at http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/

There will also be information sessions throughout October on the ACA: http://www.itstartswithbluend.com/sessions.php and there’s a toll free info line at 1-800-318-2596. Aside from that, four locations are meant to serve as “navigators”, meaning they are supposed to supply people with information to help with submitting applications, clarifying issues regarding the different plans etc., and also help people with applying and otherwise navigating through the application process. The information I found lists the following as the “navigators” for ND, but the sites of these places don’t say anything on the topic, so it may not be accurate:

Second, this is what’s going on in North Dakota in terms of proposed legislation:North Dakota Lawmakers Have Plenty of Anti-Abortion Bills to Choose From, plenty meaning all these different bills: SCR4009, a fetal personhood bill which would require a 2014 vote to amend the constitustion and which was just approved by the ND Senate; SB2302, which would have banned chemical abortions and all abortions except those to save a woman’s life, which luckily seems to have failed in the senate 18 to 29; SB2303 another personhood bill, which passed the senate 25 to 22 and is now in another Committee Hearing; and SB2305, a TRAP law designed to close down the last clinic in ND, which has also passed the senate 30 to 17. Oh, and then there’s the newly proposedHB1305, which would prohibit “abortions for sex selection or genetic abnormalities” (which really just amounts to “please jump through more hoops”)UPDATE: another one: HB1456, a “heartbeat” bill, passed by the house 63 to 28

And in addition to the anti-abortion bills, we have an anti-poor-people bill, HB1385, proposing a Fee to Get Welfare, by making welfare applicants pay for the mandatory drug test themselves (Because we all know people applying for welfare have lot’s of spare cash, amiright?); the deeply uninformative SB2175 titled “The liabilities of husband and wife” which seems to want to make separated-but-still-married folks responsible for each other’s debts; which sounds kinda dangerous.

P.S.: completely unrelated to the topic at hand, ND is apparently also one of those states throwing a fit over federal gun laws: HB1183, a bill “relating to forbidding state governmental entities from providing aid and assistance to the federal government or any other governmental entity for the investigation, enforcement, and prosecution of federal firearms laws not in force as of January”.

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*title changed, because I just realized I was doing what I criticize other people for. So: anti-abortion legislation concerns many women, but not all, since some don’t have uteri and can’t get pregnant; and on the other hand, it also concerns some non-women because they have uteri, i.e. trans men and some genderqueer folks.

This time, the link roundup is going to be tiny, and about good, current causes to donate to. That’s because I’m broke until my January payments finally deign to come in, and therefore this is the best I can do just now.

1)Black Skeptics Los Angeles have created scholarships for “college-bound Los Angeles Unified School District students in South Los Angeles. Preference will be given to students who are in foster care, homeless, undocumented and/or LGBTQ”: link

2)This trans woman is asking for donations to fund her SRS because she needs some form of reconstructive genital reconstruction, one way or the other, because she assaulted, which resulted in permanent and painful damage to her genitals; and of course the SRS route isn’t covered by insurance: link

The “Starving Student” is an extremely common cultural trope. Pretty much everyone who’s gone to college has stories about “slumming” it, and these stories are accepted as a matter of course; even Michele Obama and Ann Romney pulled out stories from their college years as experiences of “poverty” (using as examples of this experience a car with a rusted-through floor, and the inability to entertain guests, respectively).

The reason the trope is so widespread is that people who attended college really often perceive those years as the time they were poorest; generally, that’s because they have significantly reduced access to their parents’ assets, and have not yet been able to accumulate any themselves. This perception that being a student is a form of very temporary and relative poverty is in fact so widespread, it has managed to become the dominant narrative about students and poverty, eclipsing other possibilities; such as that sometimes it’s not that the students are poor, but that the poor are students.

What this means is that the trope that poverty is inherent to the student-status and is therefore not “real poverty” erases those people who are “really poor”, but who also attend college. This means for example that people will dismiss your financial situation if they also find out that you’re a student. Certainly this has happened to me: I’ve had people completely dismiss my claims of being poor despite the fact that in my entire adult life, I’ve only had a couple years with income above the poverty line, and certainly haven’t gotten any more wealthy since I went back to school a couple years back. This erasure of poor people who are college students has other, more tangible effects as well. Student-status can fuck with one’s eligibility for assorted programs for the poor, though I don’t know the extent of this policy. To use myself as an example again, when I was living in Seattle, a lot of the affordable housing specifically stated that students and prospective students weren’t eligible; regardless of their income, regardless of their family’s income, regardless of whether they counted as dependent or independent students for purposes of financial aid for college. Consequently, managing being both poor and trying to get an education is made more difficult, both formally and informally, by denying the possibility that a student’s low income might not have anything to do with their student status, and might not go away by itself or with a phone-call home. It’s one more way in which doing things while poor ends up with added hurdles, in addition to what simply being poor and trying to do something would accomplish by itself.

ok, so a)kids these days are not actually feeling more entitled to have their opinion valued than kids in the past, and are overall actually less likely to be entitled douchecanoes than teenagers of previous generations (or at least, are likely to be less entitled and less doucheconoe-y), as can be seen by their increased support of deconstruction of various forms of privilege in society; and b) kids these days are maybe more heard than they used to be, but quite frankly I’m against instilling authoritarian values of “kids should be seen, not heard” in children. Plus, while kids are by definition less experienced and less informed, on average, than their elders, they’re not inherently wronger than their elders; especially given the fact that plenty of old people didn’t exactly use their years to learn anything (see: teabaggers and assorted other willfully ignorant dolts). Therefore there’s no reason to assume that a young person’s opinion or argument will be by default more incorrect than an older person’s opinion or argument. Sayng otherwise is to pretty much agree with those Republicans who whine because young people are liberal and whine about how the voting age should be raised to 25, because you know kids, they so stoopid.

Anyway, that’s just about the comment. The article linked to is even worse:

TODAY’S teenagers are shaped by a multitude of weighty issues – high levels of teenage obesity, a heavy binge drinking culture and a social media landscape with hefty consequences.

I’ll give you childhood obesity and the newfangled problems of growing up on the internet, but since when is getting ridiculously drunk as a teen/young adult a new phenomenon?

But pause for a moment and consider the corresponding gargantuan rise in the younger generation’s confidence in the value of their opinions.

Also not new. Thinking you know better than your parents is an essential ingredient in young adulthood in the West, and has been so at least since a bunch of “kids these days” went out to protest against their parents’ social order in the 60’s.

The sheer weight of their viewpoints is growing exponentially as parents and teachers alike are counselled to hold a young person’s opinion in the highest regard.

Highest regard? Teh lol. I admit though, this is at least newer than the participation-ribbon whining.

As a teacher with more than 20 years’ experience it is increasingly painful to read and listen to opinion in the absence of background knowledge, research or experience – ”no offence”, teenagers.

As a person spending a lot of time on the internet, I am similarly pained by having to “read and listen to opinion in the absence of background knowledge, research or experience”. I just don’t find that such is at all limited to teens. In fact, personally I experience it far more from adults. Maybe, just maybe, this has fuck-all to do with “kids these days”, and a lot more with the anti-intellectualism that this quote I keep on referring to complains about, and you just think it’s just teens because you’ve been stuck in a room with them for hours every day?

Past generations paid due regard to the expertise of the teacher and gained intellectual exercise by reading and (gasp) memorising important information.

And now we have Teh Google and don’t need to rely on faulty human memory. As for “past generations paid due regard to the expertise of the teacher”… well, the “past generations” didn’t seem to think so:

“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent onthe frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.”
— Hesiod, Eighth Century B.C.

“The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.”
— Attributed to Peter the Hermit, A.D. 1274

“the father accustoms himself to become like his child and fears his sons, while the son likens himself to his father, and feels neither shame nor fear in front of his parents, so he may be free; […] To these, said I, such trifles do add up: the teacher, in such a case, fears his pupils and fawns upon them, while pupils have in low esteem their teachers as well as their overseers; and, overall, the young copy the elders and contend hotly with them in words and in deeds, while the elders, lowering themselves to the level of the young, sate themselves with pleasantries and wit, mimicking the young in order not to look unpleasant and despotic.”
— Plato (putting words in other people’s mouth), ca. 380 B.C.

Point being, you can probably find, in every generation, some adults in authority who’ll freely and happily complain about how disrespectful towards authority “kids these days” are. Generally without any evidence for that being the case, and without evidence that argumentative youth are an actual social ill (rather than a personal annoyance).

No wonder today’s students find university such a challenge, coming from a school system where the mathematics curriculum includes estimation and the English curriculum covers social media.

I don’t know anything about this estimation stuff, but why wouldn’t an English curriculum cover social media!? It’s an important form of modern communication, why shouldn’t students learn about effective use and interpretation thereof? Anyway, I don’t know shit about the issues Australian students have with Australian universities (explanation on this subject would be highly appreciated), but I have a pretty good idea why American youth may find university challenging: creationism and similar bowing to parental/religious bullshittery leaking into high-school curricula; defunding of education; active opposition (by adults) to teaching kids critical thinking*; making higher education more expensive while at the same time cutting financial aid, forcing students to take anywhere between 1 and 3 jobs to support their university-going habit. And as for European teens… I don’t find that they are having a harder time at university than they used to (except as caused by the issues with having to suddenly work in addition to study, since cost of university has gone up pretty much everywhere). So, hey, maybe Australian teens are singularily stupid and are the only kids on the globe who find university more challenging because we let them have opinions. I doubt it though.

Having recently spent time teaching students in China, I can’t help but draw stark comparisons to my local teaching experience. Students there expect that they will be given a tonne of information and will be assigned extensive homework involving engagement with the instructional material. Invitations to express opinions are met with puzzlement. Rather, they expect and welcome direction.

What’s fascinating about this quote is that I had a similar conversation once with a professor of mine; she was pointing out the difference between American students and freshly arrived Chinese students. She was having a very hard time getting the Chinese students to evaluate ideas critically and engage in discussion, preferring instead to uncritically absorb information given to them by an authority figure. Unlike the author, she did not at all find that to be a positive quality, and I agree. Sure, teens and young adults are very likely to get it wrong and Dunning-Kruger when they criticize an idea. But they’re students, meaning they’re practicing critical analysis, and we should teach them how to do it correctly instead of telling them to STFU and listen. Because otherwise, they’ll leave college having only learned that one should always uncritically absorb what authority figures say. Which is not how you get an informed citizenry; or a good crop of engineers and scientists.

In contrast, our students launch into impassioned and complex negotiation the moment there is a hint of work to be done (a technique all too familiar to any parent attempting to institute household chores).

How is passively absorbing information “in contrast” to refusing to do homework? And what does it have to do with the previous part of the rant where teens were Teh Spoilt because they felt entitled to opinions?

Mind you, I’d like to see some evidence that “kids these days” are actually more likely to try to weasel out of work than they used to, because in my experience, it’s always been thus. Or is the complaint here rather that kids now actually voice said complaints to the teachers directly, instead of just forcing the Nerd to do their homework for them, surreptitiously (or collaborate, the way we did, to minimize the amount of work each individual had to do)? Because that, if true, would be at least an interesting topic of conversation.

When the work comes in (often late) it is littered with sentences starting with ”I think” – an amusing oxymoron.

*rolleyes*

Little reference is made to any research other than nominal efforts to cut and paste from Wikipedia.

True enough. But it’s not just plagiarism that got easier, but the discovery thereof. I’m willing to bet kids used to crib off each other/their older siblings/friends (or, just have their essays dictated by parents in some cases) before the advent of plugging their paragraph into google made it easier to spot such behavior. Also… the author has complained above that kids are insufficiently submissive to authority, and is now whining because they use wikipedia as authoritative? Consistency, please: unless kids are taught to navigate the internet (something that the author also just bemoaned as unsuitable for English class), and unless they’re taught to evaluate sources as reliable or not, they’re going to uncritically regurgitate whatever they heard/read somewhere, and it’ll be all the same to them whether it was their teacher or their teabagger uncle or Teh Interwebs.

Having now taught through generations X, Y and Z, the labelling of the next generation is clear. Generation I – the first, foremost, the centre of attention.

This is really fucking hilarious, considering the exactly same whining was being done when the current crop of teens were Gen Y and how their Helicopter Parents were spoiling them rotten. Now, as the oldest members of Gen Y are beginning to reach the “respectable” age of 30, it’s apparently no longer cool to complain about them being “Generation Me”; so instead the newest crop of teens get labeled “Generation I”. Creative, that.

I think I’d better retire before I face the gargantuan task of teaching this next generation of overconfident individuals. Their weighty opinions are too much to bear and I’ve exercised all my patience.

Sounds like an admission that actually, it’s the author (and having run out of the patience and energy it has always taken to with teens in institutional settings without being allowed to beat them**), not “kids these days” that are the problem. Retiring might indeed be a good idea, before the author start yelling “get off my lawn” at hapless students crossing the campus greenery. Alternatively, some citations about how much worse the kids are these days would be appreciated. Or is research only for kids, and adults are exempt from that requirement now?

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*From the Party Platform of the Texas Republicans (page 12):”We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
But hey, maybe the author agrees with the Repubs, since she doesn’t seem to like it when students challenge anything and undermine authority.

**There’s a reason I thought the rule of teachers retiring after 20 (or 25, I don’t quite recall now) years of teaching was excellent. Some few people have amazing (even for teachers) stores of energy, but most people tend to get slightly exhausted and… “odd”, to put it delicately, after spending more than two decades dealing with humans in their most annoying stages of development.